Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the debate in Valladolid, Spain in 1550, over Spanish rights to enslave the native peoples in the newly conquered lands. Bartolomé de Las Casas (pictured above), the Bishop of Chiapas, Mexico, was trying to end the encomienda system in which those who now owned the land could also take the people in forced labour. Juan Gines Sepulveda, a philosopher, argued for the colonists' property rights over people, asserting that some native Americans were 'natural slaves' as defined by Aristotle. Valladolid became seen as the first open attempt by European colonists to discuss the ethics of slavery, and Las Casas became known as 'Saviour of the Indians' and an advocate for human rights, although for some time he argued that African slaves be imported to do the work in place of the native people, before repenting.

With

Caroline Dodds Pennock
Senior Lecturer in International History at the University of Sheffield

John Edwards
Faculty Fellow in Spanish at the University of Oxford

And

Julia McClure
Lecturer in Late Medieval and Early Modern Global History at the University of Glasgow

Producer: Simon Tillotson

The Valladolid Debate (Summer Repeat)

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the outstanding French writers of the twentieth century. The novels of Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (1873 - 1954) always had women at their centre, from youth to mid-life to old age, and they were phenomenally popular, at first for their freshness and frankness about women’s lives, as in the Claudine stories, and soon for their sheer quality as she developed as a writer. Throughout her career she intrigued readers by inserting herself, or a character with her name, into her works, fictionalising her life as a way to share her insight into the human experience.

With

Diana Holmes
Professor of French at the University of Leeds

Michèle Roberts
Writer, novelist, poet and Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia

And

Belinda Jack
Fellow and Tutor in French Literature and Language at Christ Church, University of Oxford

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Colette (Summer Repeat)

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great epic poem attributed to Homer, telling the story of an intense episode in the Trojan War. It is framed by the wrath of the Greek hero Achilles, insulted by his leader Agamemnon and withdrawing from the battle that continued to rage, only returning when his close friend Patroclus is killed by the Trojan hero Hector. Achilles turns his anger from Agamemnon to Hector and the fated destruction of Troy comes ever closer.

With

Edith Hall
Professor of Classics at King's College London

Barbara Graziosi
Professor of Classics at Princeton University

And

Paul Cartledge
A.G. Leventis Senior Research Fellow and Emeritus Professor of Greek Culture at Clare College, Cambridge

Producer: Simon Tillotson.

The Iliad (Summer Repeat)

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and life of the German theologian, born in Breslau/Wroclaw in 1906 and killed in the Flossenbürg concentration camp on 9th April 1945. Bonhoeffer developed ideas about the role of the Church in the secular world, in particular Germany after the Nazis took power in 1933 and demanded the Churches' support. He strongly opposed anti-Semitism and, with a role in the Military Intelligence Department, took part in the resistance, plotting to kill Hitler and meeting with contacts in the Allies. Bonhoeffer's ideas on Christian ethics and the relationship between Christianity and humanism spread more widely from the 1960s with the discovery of unpublished works, including those written in prison as he awaited execution.

With

Stephen Plant
Dean and Runcie Fellow at Trinity Hall at the University of Cambridge

Eleanor McLaughlin
Lecturer in Theology and Ethics at the University of Winchester and Lecturer in Ethics at Regent’s Park College at the University of Oxford

And

Tom Greggs
Marischal Chair of Divinity at the University of Aberdeen

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Summer Repeat)

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the most powerful woman in the Crusader states in the century after the First Crusade. Melisende (1105-61) was born and raised after the mainly Frankish crusaders had taken Jerusalem from the Fatimids, and her father was King of Jerusalem. She was married to Fulk from Anjou, on the understanding they would rule together, and for 30 years she vied with him and then their son as they struggled to consolidate their Frankish state in the Holy Land.

The image above is of the coronation of Fulk with Melisende, from Livre d'Eracles, Guillaume de Tyr (1130?-1186)
Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France

With

Natasha Hodgson
Senior Lecturer in Medieval History and Director of the Centre for the Study of Religion and Conflict at Nottingham Trent University

Katherine Lewis
Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Huddersfield

and

Danielle Park
Visiting Lecturer at Royal Holloway, University of London

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Melisende, Queen of Jerusalem (Summer Repeat)

Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system, and it’s hard to imagine a world more alien and different from Earth. It’s known as a Gas Giant, and its diameter is eleven times the size of Earth’s: our planet would fit inside it one thousand three hundred times. But its mass is only three hundred and twenty times greater, suggesting that although Jupiter is much bigger than Earth, the stuff it’s made of is much, much lighter. When you look at it through a powerful telescope you see a mass of colourful bands and stripes: these are the tops of ferocious weather systems that tear around the planet, including the great Red Spot, probably the longest-lasting storm in the solar system. Jupiter is so enormous that it’s thought to have played an essential role in the distribution of matter as the solar system formed – and it plays an important role in hoovering up astral debris that might otherwise rain down on Earth. It’s almost a mini solar system in its own right, with 95 moons orbiting around it. At least two of these are places life might possibly be found.  

With

Michele Dougherty, Professor of Space Physics and Head of the Department of Physics at Imperial College London, and principle investigator of the magnetometer instrument on the JUICE spacecraft (JUICE is the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, a mission launched by the European Space Agency in April 2023)

Leigh Fletcher, Professor of Planetary Science at the University of Leicester, and interdisciplinary scientist for JUICE

Carolin Crawford, Emeritus Fellow of Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge, and Emeritus Member of the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge

Jupiter

In 1956 Oxford University awarded an honorary degree to the former US president Harry S. Truman for his role in ending the Second World War. One philosopher, Elizabeth Anscombe (1919 – 2001), objected strongly. 

She argued that although dropping nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki may have ended the fighting, it amounted to the murder of tens of thousands of innocent civilians. It was therefore an irredeemably immoral act. And there was something fundamentally wrong with a moral philosophy that didn’t see that. 

This was the starting point for a body of work that changed the terms in which philosophers discussed moral and ethical questions in the second half of the twentieth century.  

A leading student of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, Anscombe combined his insights with rejuvenated interpretations of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas that made these ancient figures speak to modern issues and concerns. Anscombe was also instrumental in making action, and the question of what it means to intend to do something, a leading area of philosophical work.  

With 

Rachael Wiseman, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Liverpool

Constantine Sandis, Visiting Professor of Philosophy at the University of Hertfordshire, and Director of Lex Academic 

Roger Teichmann, Lecturer in Philosophy at St Hilda’s College, University of Oxford

Producer: Luke Mulhall

Elizabeth Anscombe

Death in Venice is Thomas Mann’s most famous – and infamous - novella.
Published in 1912, it’s about the fall of the repressed writer Gustav von Aschenbach, when his supposedly objective appreciation of a young boy’s beauty becomes sexual obsession.
It explores the link between creativity and self-destruction, and by the end Aschenbach’s humiliation is complete, dying on a deckchair in the act of ogling. Aschenbach's stalking of the boy and dreaming of pederasty can appal modern readers,  even more than Mann expected. 

With 

Karolina Watroba, Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in Modern Languages at All Souls College, University of Oxford

Erica Wickerson, a Former Research Fellow at St Johns College, University of Cambridge

Sean Williams, Senior Lecturer in German and European Cultural History at the University of Sheffield 

Sean Williams' series of Radio 3's The Essay, Death in Trieste, can be found here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001lzd4

Death in Venice

Sophocles’ play Oedipus Rex begins with a warning: the murderer of the old king of Thebes, Laius, has never been identified or caught, and he’s still at large in the city. Oedipus is the current king of Thebes, and he sets out to solve the crime. 

His investigations lead to a devastating conclusion.  Not only is Oedipus himself the killer, but Laius was his father, and Laius’ wife Jocasta, who Oedipus has married, is his mother. 

Oedipus Rex was composed during the golden age of Athens, in the 5th century BC. Sophocles probably wrote it to explore the dynamics of power in an undemocratic society.  It has unsettled audiences from the very start: it is the only one of Sophocles’ plays that didn’t win first prize at Athens’ annual drama festival. But it’s had exceptionally good write-ups from the critics: 
Aristotle called it the greatest example of the dramatic arts. Freud believed it laid bare the deepest structures of human desire.  

With: 

Nick Lowe, Reader in Classical Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London 

Fiona Macintosh, Professor of Classical Reception and Fellow of St Hilda’s College at the University of Oxford

Edith Hall, Professor of Classics at Durham University

Oedipus Rex

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the power-packs within cells in all complex life on Earth. 

Inside each cell of every complex organism there are structures known as mitochondria. The 19th century scientists who first observed them thought they were bacteria which had somehow invaded the cells they were studying. We now understand that mitochondria take components from the food we eat and convert them into energy.  

Mitochondria are essential for complex life, but as the components that run our metabolisms they can also be responsible for a range of diseases – and they probably play a role in how we age. The DNA in mitochondria is only passed down the maternal line. This means it can be used to trace population movements deep into human history, even back to an ancestor we all share: mitochondrial Eve. 

With 

Mike Murphy
Professor of Mitochondrial Redox Biology at the University of Cambridge

Florencia Camus 
NERC Independent Research Fellow at University College London

and 

Nick Lane
Professor of Evolutionary Biochemistry at University College London


Producer  Luke Mulhall

Mitochondria

In 1661 the 23 year-old French king Louis the XIV had been on the throne for 18 years when his chief minister, Cardinal Mazarin, died. Louis is reported to have said to his ministers, “It is now time that I govern my affairs myself. You will assist me with your counsels when I ask for them [but] I order you to seal no orders except by my command… I order you not to sign anything, not even a passport, without my command, and to render account to me personally each day”

So began the personal rule of Louis XIV, which lasted a further 54 years until his death in 1715. From his newly-built palace at Versailles, Louis was able to project an image of himself as the centre of gravity around which all of France revolved: it’s no accident that he became known as the Sun King. He centralized power to the extent he was able to say ‘L’etat c’est moi’: I am the state. Under his rule France became the leading diplomatic, military and cultural power in Europe.

With

Catriona Seth 
Marshal Foch Professor of French Literature at the University of Oxford

Guy Rowlands 
Professor of Early Modern History at the University of St Andrews

and

Penny Roberts
Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Warwick

Producer: Luke Mulhall

Louis XIV: The Sun King

In the year 29 BC the great Roman poet Virgil published these lines:  
Blessed is he who has succeeded in learning the laws of nature’s working, has cast beneath his feet all fear and fate’s implacable decree, and the howl of insatiable Death. But happy too is he who knows the rural gods…

They’re from his poem the Georgics, a detailed account of farming life in the Italy of the time. ‘Georgics’ means ‘agricultural things’, and it’s often been read as a farming manual. But it was written at a moment when the Roman world was emerging from a period of civil war, and questions of land ownership and management were heavily contested. It’s also a philosophical reflection on humanity’s relationship with the natural world, the ravages of time, and the politics of Virgil’s day.  

It’s exerted a profound influence on European writing about agriculture and rural life, and has much to offer environmental thinking today. 

With 

Katharine Earnshaw 
Senior Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History at the University of Exeter; 

Neville Morley 
Professor of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Exeter

and

Diana Spencer
Professor of Classics at the University of Birmingham

Producer: Luke Mulhall

Virgil's Georgics

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Christian uprising in Japan and its profound and long-term consequences. 

In the 1630s, Japan was ruled by the Tokagawa Shoguns, a military dynasty who, 30 years earlier, had unified the country, ending around two centuries of civil war. In 1637 a rebellion broke out in the province of Shimabara, in the south of the country. It was a peasants’ revolt, following years of bad harvests in which the local lord had refused to lower taxes.  Many of the rebels were Christians, and they fought under a Christian banner. 

The central government’s response was merciless. They met the rebels with an army of 150 000 men, possibly the largest force assembled anywhere in the world during the Early Modern period. Once the rebellion had been suppressed, the Shogun enforced a ban on Christianity and expelled nearly all foreigners from the country. Japan remained more or less completely sealed off from the rest of the world for the next 250 years. 

With 

Satona Suzuki 
Lecturer in Japanese and Modern Japanese History at SOAS, University of London

Erica Baffelli
Professor of Japanese Studies at the University of Manchester 

and 

Christopher Harding
Senior Lecturer in Asian History at the University of Edinburgh

Producer  Luke Mulhall

The Shimabara Rebellion

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the revelatory collection of Biblical texts, legal documents, community rules and literary writings. 

In 1946 a Bedouin shepherd boy was looking for a goat he’d lost in the hills above the Dead Sea.  He threw a rock into a cave and heard a hollow sound. He’d hit a ceramic jar containing an ancient manuscript. This was the first of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a collection of about a thousand texts dating from around 250 BC to AD 68. It is the most substantial first hand evidence we have for the beliefs and practices of Judaism in and around the lifetime of Jesus. 

The Dead Sea Scrolls have transformed our understanding of how the texts that make up the Hebrew Bible were edited and collected. They also offer a tantalising window onto the world from which Christianity eventually emerged. 

With 

Sarah Pearce 
Ian Karten Professor of Jewish Studies and Head of the School of Humanities at the University of Southampton

Charlotte Hempel
Professor of Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Judaism at the University of Birmingham 

and 

George Brooke 
Rylands Professor Emeritus of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis at the University of Manchester

Producer  Luke Mulhall

The Dead Sea Scrolls

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the highly influential American poet Walt Whitman. 

In 1855 Whitman was working as a printer, journalist and property developer when he published his first collection of poetry. It began:

I celebrate myself,
And what I assume you shall assume
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. 

The book was called Leaves of Grass. In it, Whitman set out to break away from European literary forms and traditions. Using long lines written in free verse, he developed a poetry meant to express a distinctively American outlook. 

Leaves of Grass is full of verse that celebrates both the sovereign individual, and the deep fellowship between individuals. Its optimism about the American experience was challenged by the Civil War and its aftermath, but Whitman emerged as a celebrity and a key figure in the development of American culture.  

With 

Sarah Churchwell
Professor of American Literature and the Public Understanding of the Humanities at the University of London

Peter Riley 
Lecturer in 19th Century American Literature at the University of Exeter
 
and 

Mark Ford
Professor of English and American Literature at University College London

Producer  Luke Mulhall

Walt Whitman

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, ideas and legacy of the pioneering Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus (1707 – 1778). The philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau once wrote: "Tell him I know no greater man on earth". 

The son of a parson, Linnaeus grew up in an impoverished part of Sweden but managed to gain a place at university. He went on to transform biology by making two major innovations. He devised a simpler method of naming species and he developed a new system for classifying plants and animals, a system that became known as the Linnaean hierarchy. He was also one of the first people to grow a banana in Europe. 

With

Staffan Muller-Wille
University Lecturer in History of Life, Human and Earth Sciences at the University of Cambridge

Stella Sandford
Professor of Modern European Philosophy at Kingston University, London

and 

Steve Jones 
Senior Research Fellow in Genetics at University College, London

Producer  Luke Mulhall

Linnaeus

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the brutal events of 26 August 1346, when the armies of France and England met in a funnel-shaped valley outside the town of Crécy in northern France. 

Although the French, led by Philip VI, massively outnumbered the English, under the command of Edward III, the English won the battle, and French casualties were huge. The English victory is often attributed to the success of their longbowmen against the heavy cavalry of the French. 

The Battle of Crécy was the result of years of simmering tension between Edward III and Philip VI, and it led to decades of further conflict between England and France, a conflict that came to be known as the Hundred Years War. 

With

Anne Curry 
Emeritus Professor of Medieval History at the University of Southampton 

Andrew Ayton
Senior Research Fellow in History at Keele University

and 
 
Erika Graham-Goering
Lecturer in Late Medieval History at Durham University

Producer  Luke Mulhall

The Battle of Crécy

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Danish prince who became a very effective King of England in 1016.  

Cnut inherited a kingdom in a sorry state. The north and east coast had been harried by Viking raiders, and his predecessor King Æthelred II had struggled to maintain order amongst the Anglo-Saxon nobility too. Cnut proved to be skilful ruler. Not only did he bring stability and order to the kingdom, he exported the Anglo-Saxon style of centralised government to Denmark. Under Cnut, England became the cosmopolitan centre of a multi-national North Atlantic Empire, and a major player in European politics. 

With 

Erin Goeres
Associate Professor of Old Norse Language and Literature at University College London

Pragya Vohra
Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of York

and 

Elizabeth Tyler
Professor of Medieval Literature and Co-Director of the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of York 

Producer  Luke Mulhall

Cnut

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Virginia Woolf's highly influential essay on women and literature, which considers both literary history and future opportunity.  

In 1928 Woolf gave two lectures at Cambridge University about women and fiction. In front of an audience at Newnham College, she delivered the following words: “All I could do was offer you an opinion upon one minor point - a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction; and that, as you will see, leaves the great problem of the true nature of woman and the true nature of fiction unsolved”. 

These lectures formed the basis of a book she published the following year, and Woolf chose A Room Of One’s Own for its title. It is a text that set the scene for the study of women’s writing for the rest of the 20th century. Arguably, it initiated the discipline of women’s history too. 

With  

Hermione Lee
Emeritus Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford

Michele Barrett 
Emeritus Professor of Modern Literary and Cultural Theory at Queen Mary, University of London

and

Alexandra Harris
Professor of English at the University of Birmingham

Producer  Luke Mulhall

A Room of One's Own

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Solon, who was elected archon or chief magistrate of Athens in 594 BC: some see him as the father of Athenian democracy.  

In the first years of the 6th century BC, the city state of Athens was in crisis. The lower orders of society were ravaged by debt, to the point where some were being forced into slavery. An oppressive law code mandated the death penalty for everything from murder to petty theft. There was a real danger that the city could fall into either tyranny or civil war.

Solon instituted a programme of reforms that transformed Athens’ political and legal systems, its society and economy, so that later generations referred to him as Solon the Lawgiver. 

With

Melissa Lane
Class of 1943 Professor of Politics at Princeton University

Hans van Wees
Grote Professor of Ancient History at University College London

and
 
William Allan
Professor of Greek and McConnell Laing Tutorial Fellow in Greek and Latin Languages and Literature at University College, University of Oxford 

Producer  Luke Mulhall

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